Magic Judge Monthly: May 2019

Seek the horizons, fellow judges!
Welcome to your May issue, and it’s all a little quiet for news as we approach Modern Horizons. Hope everyone’s prereleases went well, and we’ll have Release notes and news on that launch, next month!

Featured Blog!
Judge Booth returns:

Judge Booth is back. A program to challenge Judges and give non-Judge folks a taste of the strange and difficult questions the game we all love is able to offer up. If you’d like to see the recent success of the program at GP/MF Strasbourg, this article will show you around. If you’d like to challenge yourself with some of the questions, check out the Booth website.

2. AP plays Path to Exile targeting one of their opponent’s creatures. AP knows for some reason (e.g. via Surgical Extraction) that NAP does not have any more basic lands in their deck and fails to tell the player they can search for a basic land. In Competitive REL is this CPV?

A: It’s not. If the action would not have impact in the current game state, it’s not an infraction to fail to demonstrate awareness of it.

3. In the first game of the first round of a Competitive REL event, a player presents a deck with 62 cards main deck and 13 in their sideboard. While drawing for the turn, that player realizes they have forgot to desideboard from a previous tournament. Their list matched the 62-13 card configuration and the player didn’t notice because they asked a friend to write the list. At this point, which is the infraction and penalty?

A: This can go 2 ways: either the involved player keeps playing that game with no infraction at all (the deck matched the list, so everything is good) OR that player can have a Game Loss for Decklist Problem because the list “doesn’t match what the player intended to play”. The player can modify their list and deck accordingly and start playing the second game of the round with a 0-1 record!

4. AP attacks with Parhelion II and creates the attacking tokens. NAP controls Coveted Jewel, blocks the Parhelion II with a creature and takes 8 damage from the tokens. After all of that, who controls Coveted Jewel?

A: AP does. An ability that triggers whenever something “attacks and isn’t blocked” triggers if no blockers are declared for that creature, regardless of whether or not the creature was ever actually declared as an attacking creature.

5. Since it’s written in the MTR that Alpha cards (that have a different cut from the rest of the cards) can be used in tournament play if they are in purely opaque sleeves, if a player gets an uncut sheet, is he allowed to cut the sheet and play with those cards?

A: If a player can cut the cards precisely, and they can mimic the current cut, then the answer is yes. Otherwise, they’ll be considered Marked Cards. The only exception in the MTR is for Alpha cards.

Bonus Question: What if the cut can mimic that of a Magic card, but it’s done in a way that seems like a misprint?

Sugar on Top!

From our twitter page: (Bears) How did Alfonso become a Mythic Championship Appeals Judge? The secret is mentorship! Here’s Alfonso receiving some help from Kasmina herself! ello Kasmina (@NissaCosplay)